‘Berthier!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Halt the men. Then find General Menou. Tell him to take a brigade and storm that fort.’
Berthier saluted and a moment later the officers and sergeants were bellowing their orders up and down the line. While the other soldiers waited, three battalions marched forward and deployed across the track in front of the fort.The gun on the wall continued firing steadily, scoring one hit on the attackers that swept away a file of six men. Menou immediately sent forward a screen of skirmishers to fire at any of the enemy that dared to show their heads above the parapet. Under cover of their comrades’ fire the assault columns quick-marched across the packed sand and scrambled up the crumbling mud walls. From his position Napoleon could see the glint of bayonets and curved swords twinkling in the sunshine as Menou’s soldiers fell upon the defenders. It was soon over and the green flag with a yellow crescent that had fluttered above the ramparts was hauled down and a moment later the tricolour rose in its place.
Napoleon nodded with satisfaction, then gave the order for the column to move forward. They marched past the fort and exchanged cheers with the men on the walls. Menou left a handful of men behind to guard the prisoners and then rejoined the tail of the column as it passed the fort and continued down the track towards Alexandria. By the time they had reached the town the sun had risen high enough to make the air stifling.The men were wearing the same uniforms that they had worn in Europe and were weighed down by five days’ issue of rations and sixty rounds for each musket. Most had already emptied their canteens and their dry throats were further irritated by the dust kicked up by the marching column.
Napoleon and Berthier climbed up on to a pile of ancient masonry to observe the town’s defences while the men deployed for the attack. Closer to the walls they could now see that the stonework was old and small sections around the main gates had fallen down. Napoleon pointed them out with his riding crop.
‘We’ll attack through those.’
Berthier unrolled the map of the town that he had obtained from a French merchant. ‘Ah, yes, the Pompey and Rosetta gates. According to our source, once we’re through those, there are no other defences in the town, sir.’
‘Good. Then let’s not waste any more time. Kléber can attack the Pompey gate, while Bon takes the Rosetta. Give the orders.’
As the French battalions tramped foward, kicking up yet more dust that billowed around and above them, at times obscuring Napoleon’s view of the assault, the enemy began to fire from the walls and bastions, tiny flickers of flame and puffs of smoke indicating their positions. The sunlight beat upon the parched landscape and after a while Napoleon sat down on a small pile of pottery fragments to watch the proceedings. As he squinted into the dusty haze about the gates he irritably swiped at the potsherds with his riding crop. Eventually he could stand it no longer and scrambled down and strode towards the nearest gate, his staff hurrying to catch up with him. Berthier trotted forward and fell into step alongside his general.
‘Excuse me, sir, but where are we going?’
‘Where the fighting is,’ Napoleon grumbled.‘Can’t see a thing from back there.’
‘Is that wise, sir? After what nearly happened at Arcola?’
Napoleon drew up abruptly. ‘Berthier, never question my actions again.’
‘Sir, with respect, you are the commander of an army sent to fight far away from France. If you die, unnecessarily, then you place all these men in danger.’
‘And what if I die necessarily?’ Napoleon shook his head. ‘War is dangerous, Berthier. Would it really be safer for me to stay so far back from the fighting that I could not see the battle? How could I respond in time to the moves of the enemy? I have to go forward, understand?’
Berthier nodded. ‘Very well, sir. But please be careful.’
‘That I can promise with a clear conscience.’ Napoleon grinned. ‘Come on!’
They passed through the Pompey gate and at once Napoleon smelt the thick heavy odour of excrement and decay, a far more pungent and unpleasant stench than even the poorest quarters of Paris had to endure. Just inside the walls they came across the first bodies: two Frenchmen sprawled across the corpse of a well-muscled man in a turban and a flowing tunic. He had four pistols jammed into a wide band of cloth around his waist. In his hand was the scimitar with which he had cut down his two foes. Beside him lay a purse, split open, and a few silver coins still lay on the soiled street where the first wave of French troops had not had time to sweep them all up.
‘One of their Mamelukes, I think.’ Napoleon knelt down beside the body and gently took the blade from the dead man’s hand. The Mamelukes were an elite cast of warriors who were well rewarded by their Turkish masters.The hilt was finely crafted and set with precious stones arranged around a dazzling ruby.
‘Good God,’ muttered Berthier. ‘Is that what I think it is? I’ve never seen such a fine gem.’
Napoleon smiled as he rose and handed him the scimitar. ‘Here. If this is the kind of wealth their soldiers are carrying around then there’ll be rich pickings for France, and for us. Come on.’
They hurried down a narrow, filthy street, following the crackle of musket fire, and soon caught up with one of the attacking columns which had emerged into a large market place. The men had taken cover behind abandoned and upended stalls and carts and were exchanging shots with scores of the enemy defending the walls of a mosque. High up, in the tower, a robed figure shouted encouragement to his brethren, occasionally breaking off to wave his fists at the French troops and scream some kind of abuse at the invaders. Napoleon strode across to the nearest officer, a young captain, and grabbed his arm. ‘What the hell is going on here? Why aren’t you advancing?’
‘Sir, it’s General Kléber. He’s been wounded.’
‘Kléber? Where is he?’
The captain pointed across the market to a group of men huddled in the entrance to a large house.
‘Right.’ Napoleon nodded. ‘Get your men forward, Captain. Tell them to concentrate their fire on that man in the tower. I want him shot down, then you take the mosque. Clear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then get on with it.’
He left the captain and ran over to the house he had indicated. A small party of soldiers stood guard at the entrance and they stiffened to attention as their commander swept past them.
‘Kléber?’ Napoleon called out.
‘Over here, sir!’
Napoleon turned and saw a surgeon gesturing to him as he crouched over a body stretched out on the tiled floor. Kléber stirred weakly as Napoleon squatted down beside him. He had been shot in the thigh and shoulder and his white shirt and trousers were stained with blood. His eyes flickered for a moment as he tried to speak, and then he passed out.
‘Will he live?’ Napoleon asked.
‘Yes, sir. If I can stop him losing any more blood.’
‘Carry on then.’
As Napoleon and Berthier emerged from the building a loud cheer echoed across the market square, and looking up Napoleon saw the body of the muezzin draped over the parapet of the minaret. The defenders of the mosque stopped firing when they became aware of their leader’s death and one by one they began to throw down their arms and wait to be taken prisoner.
‘Good.’ Napoleon nodded with satisfaction. ‘Seems we killed the right man. Let’s hope that’s how things work here.’ For a moment, seeing Berthier’s shocked look, he chided himself for such cold-blooded musing, then he shook the feeling off and began to issue his orders for the capture of the rest of Alexandria.
By noon the last pockets of resistance had been mopped up and Napoleon surveyed the town from the tower of the mosque. He had tipped the body of the muezzin unceremoniously over the edge of the parapet and it had tumbled on to the roof below, lying on the whitewashed curve like a broken doll. Napoleon stepped over the pool of blood and gazed round the horizon. To the north, the sea sparkled like a sheet of tiny dia
monds, cool and inviting. He could even see the masts of Admiral Brueys’s fleet lying peacefully at anchor ten miles away, and hoped that the last elements of the expeditionary force had finally reached shore.To the south and east sand and dunes stretched away into the shimmering distance. In that direction, he knew, lay Cairo, and the Turkish overlord of Egypt - Pasha Abu Bakr. Even now news must have reached him that a French army had landed, and the Pasha would be gathering a host to overwhelm the French general and his men. Napoleon smiled. At least he would not have to hunt too far to find his enemy. If the maps he had were accurate Cairo was only a hundred miles away. An easy five days’ march if his good fortune held.
Chapter 30
As dawn painted the sky pink two days later Napoleon and his staff departed Alexandria, leaving two thousand men behind to defend the city under the command of General Kléber, who was recovering from his wounds. The army was striking out towards the Nile, nearly fifty miles away, and then Napoleon would lead the advance along the banks of the great river to Cairo. Desaix and the main body of the army had set out two nights before - after joining their comrades at Alexandria - tramping into the moonlit desert to cover as many miles as possible before the sun rose and turned the arid landscape into a furnace.
The air was still cool and Napoleon felt comfortable as his staff and the guides followed in the tracks of the four divisions that had gone ahead. A wide swath of churned sand stretched out before them and Napoleon was keen to re-join his army even as he enjoyed the muffled sounds of their progress. He laughed and turned to Berthier.
‘I think the sun must have got to Desaix’s head.Those reports he sent to us yesterday about the harsh conditions can’t have been true.Why, at the rate we’re marching, we could reach the Nile by tomorrow night.’
Berthier shrugged.‘It’s early in the day, sir.You know what the heat is like at midday. Besides, the men are in the wrong kind of uniform for this climate, and with the loads they’re carrying, well, it’s going be a struggle.’
Napoleon shook his head. ‘You worry too much. You saw what our men could achieve in Italy. My God, they marched for days at a time, and then fought a battle at the end of it. And that was against a proper army - not the barbaric rabble that the Pasha will throw against us. This campaign will be over in a matter of weeks, Berthier, mark my words. Egypt is as good as ours.’
‘If you say so, General.’
‘I do. Now cheer up and enjoy the ride. You won’t see landscape like this in Europe.’
‘No,’ Berthier muttered. ‘Thank God.’
But as the sun climbed into the sky the temperature rose with it and soon the very air that he breathed seemed to scald Napoleon’s lungs. By mid-morning the blazing intensity of the sunlight reflected off the sand began to hurt his eyes so that he had to squint as the small column trudged on. Shortly after midday they came across the first signs of the difficulties that Desaix and his men had encountered on the march across the desert. A knapsack lay abandoned beside the track. Napoleon was outraged.
‘Half a day from Alexandria! That’s as far as the owner of that has got before he weakened. Have one of our men pick that up. When we find who it belongs to I’ll have him court-martialled on the spot.’
They had not marched more than another mile before they came across more discarded equipment: knapsacks, cooking pots, spare clothing, blanket rolls, even bayonets. Napoleon’s gaze swept over the detritus and he felt the first pangs of anxiety for the fate of his men. The column stopped to rest late in the afternoon and the officers and men took off their jackets and rigged them over the ends of ramrods and swords to provide some shelter from the glare of the sun. Napoleon gave orders that they should drink sparingly of their water since the nearest town marked on his map was still several hours’ march away. As dusk fell upon the desert the men struggled wearily back on to their feet and the officers mounted their horses, and the column continued its advance.
There was no conversation amongst the men. Their lips were too dry and their throats too parched to bear the weight of any words as they shuffled across the sand into the twilight. A short distance further on, in the gathering gloom, Napoleon spotted a shape lying across the track and he ordered the column to halt while he went forward with Berthier and ten of the guides. A naked man lay sprawled on his back, his eyes staring blankly into the heavens. His jaw gaped open, and as Napoleon leaned over the corpse he could see that something bloody had been stuffed into the man’s mouth. As he glanced down the torso he saw a raw, dark gash where the man’s genitalia had been cut off, and a wave of revulsion and nausea swelled up from the pit of his stomach.
‘What kind of man would do that?’
‘It’s probably the work of the Bedouin,’ Berthier replied quietly. ‘According to the reports they’ve been shadowing our forces. Now they’ve started picking off our stragglers, like this poor fellow.’
‘Savages,’ Napoleon hissed through clenched teeth as he stared at the body.
‘It’s another world here in the east, sir.They fight by different standards, different values.’ Berthier gazed down at the corpse with a sad expression.‘Shall I have the men take the body to one side and bury it?’
Napoleon was silent for a moment before he replied in a harsh tone. ‘No. Let them see it. Let them know what happens to stragglers, and maybe it’ll put some fire into their bellies. God knows, they’ll need it over the next few days.’ He straightened up and walked back to his horse. ‘We’re wasting time here. We need to get moving.’
The column shuffled forward again, and rippled warily round the body as the men stared at their dead comrade in fear and anger. He was only the first that they encountered that night. By the time the sky began to lighten, with promise of yet another day of unbearable heat, they had passed several more corpses. Some had been beheaded and all of them showed signs of torture and mutilation. The way ahead was strewn with abandoned equipment and Napoleon and his men began to nurse dreadful fears about the fate of the men who had marched before them.
Again, the searing heat and dazzling glare pinned them to the wasteland as they followed the tracks of Desaix and his divisions. Late in the morning there was a shout from the company of guides, as Napoleon’s bodyguard had come to be called, who were screening their advance. Napoleon rose up in his saddle to squint in the direction indicated. A mile away, on the crest of a dune, a small party of dark-robed figures mounted on camels was shadowing the column.
‘Looks like some of those Bedouin you mentioned.’
Berthier nodded as he stared at the distant riders. ‘I’ll pass the word back down the column. I don’t imagine there’ll be many stragglers today, sir.’
‘No . . .’
Despite Napoleon’s orders the men could not resist the thirst that tormented them and nearly every canteen was empty long before they stopped under the midday sun and rested until it had inched down towards the western horizon. Then they rose up and continued again, their shadows stretching before them thin and gaunt and obscured by the dusty haze kicked up by their heavy boots. The men were exhausted and marched at a monotonous pace, dazed expressions on their faces. Here and there a man passed a dry, tacky tongue over cracked lips and winced at the pain it produced. Napoleon and the other officers had spare canteens hanging from their saddles and drank from them as discreetly as possible. Even so, the eyes of the nearest men flickered towards them with an intensity born of desperation as their parched throats burned in agony.
They rested again shortly after midnight and sat huddled together against the cold night air. Away to the west a sand dune was dimly highlighted by the glow of a campfire and a dark silhouette kept watch over the intervening desert. Napoleon stared at the Bedouin for a long time, wondering at the hardiness of a people who could endure such a hostile environment.What kind of man would choose such a life? But if this wasteland was the kind of terrain over which the Egyptian campaign would be fought, then he would do well to recruit these desert warriors to his side.
At length, Napoleon stood up and gave the order for the column to prepare to march. ‘Tell them, one more day and then we’ll camp on the bank of the Nile.Then they can drink as much water as they want.’
As the men rose up stiffly and took their places in the marching column a rider suddenly crested the dune a short distance along the track and galloped towards Napoleon and his staff officers. He slewed his foaming horse to a halt and stretched out an arm towards Napoleon as he offered him a folded dispatch.
‘From General Desaix, sir. He begs you to read it at once.’
Napoleon hurriedly broke the seal, opened the sheet of paper out and scanned the hurriedly composed message, then looked up at the messenger. ‘Tell General Desaix we will reach him tomorrow night. Until then he is to do nothing but rest his troops. Understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
As the messenger turned his horse back down the track and spurred it into a trot Napoleon gestured to Berthier. ‘Ride ahead with me.’
The two officers urged their mounts forward until they were well out of earshot of the others.Then Napoleon slowed the pace to a walk and spoke quietly.‘Desaix says his men are on the verge of mutiny.’
‘Mutiny?’
‘Quiet, you fool!’ Napoleon glanced round anxiously and then continued. ‘The men refuse to go on. Their representatives have demanded that the army retreats to Alexandria and abandons the campaign. Even worse, some of the senior officers are backing their demands.’
The Generals r-2 Page 24